Harbor City Restaurant Closed by Indiana Court

The Harbor City Restaurant in Tippecanoe County, Indiana was closed by a court when the owner kept the restaurant open despite the health department’s order to close. A county employee saw the owner, Peter Wang, loading food for delivery on July 7, 2016, two days after health inspectors closed the restaurant after an inspection July 5, 2016.

That inspection revealed 21 critical food safety violations. Inspection reports for last year, which are available online, showed the restaurant has received repeated citations for critical violations, including cockroaches and maggots on the kitchen floor, blood and dry food on the shelf used to hang raw duck to drain after cleaning, and hazardous food maintained at too high a temperature.

Other violations included a bucket with raw chicken stored directly over a bucket with bean sprouts, a heavy accumulation of food and a white fuzzy substance inside the food grinder, 6 live roaches, 6 dead roaches, raw duck held at a temperature of 78°F (the danger zone is between 40°F and 140°F), and chicken held at 54°F. In addition, debris was found on box fan blades cooling Peking duck, oven cleaner stored besides boxes of white pepper and dry vegetables, and RAID for ants and roaches found beside the mop sink.

All of these violations could cause food to become contaminated and potentially trigger an outbreak. Roaches can carry Salmonella, Staphylococcus, and Streptococcus bacteria. Maggots eat rotten food that is contaminated with pathogenic bacteria.

Judge Donald Daniel said, “these pictures show that [the restaurant] is dangerous to the public,” after being showed photos of the dead bugs on the restaurant kitchen’s floor. Health department administrator Craig Rich said that the facility should be closed because the “safety of the food had been compromised.” Rich added that the restaurant had a history of problems from the beginning. “As time has gone on, the critical violations have increased.”